SpaceX (Vol. 2)

[RacerMike]

eharding said:

Hammersia said:

Payload door wobbling around seems stuck that might kybosh re entry

Just leave it open, Starship Cabriolet, wind-in-your-hair type of thing.

Their Twitter says the Payload door has closed

[LivLL]

That's one hell of a re-entry!

[Dog Star]

This is simply jaw-dropping.

ETA - John Innsprucker in the background

[eharding]

Stunning footage, absolutely stunning.

[RacerMike]

Have a feeling it's possibly broken up as all the data has frozen and they seem to be filling for time. Not super surprising, but would be a bit of a shame!

[98elise]

eharding said:

Stunning footage, absolutely stunning.

Agreed. Amazing stuff.

[RustyMX5]

RacerMike said:

Have a feeling it's possibly broken up as all the data has frozen and they seem to be filling for time. Not super surprising, but would be a bit of a shame!

It did look like some stuff was coming off as they began to hit atmosphere before we saw plasma

[Hammersia]

RustyMX5 said:

RacerMike said:

Have a feeling it's possibly broken up as all the data has frozen and they seem to be filling for time. Not super surprising, but would be a bit of a shame!

It did look like some stuff was coming off as they began to hit atmosphere before we saw plasma

Yep looked awfully like tiles coming off rather than ice etc.

[Eric Mc]

It looked to me that the craft was tumbling before re-entry, so not properly orientated for a proper controlled reentry. They also seemed to be shedding tiles during the early stages of reentry.
Amazing live images though.

[CraigyMc]

Eric Mc said:

It looked to me that the craft was tumbling before re-entry, so not properly orientated for a proper controlled reentry. They also seemed to be shedding tiles during the early stages of reentry.
Amazing live images though.

Agree, but I'd put the rolling down to an off-centre leak, without much to stop it.

Once it was into the re-entry, the flaps visibly started to gain control authority and get that roll under control as the plasma started to show up. It's likely the control authority of the flaps was much larger than the roll the leak was causing.

I suspect the ship blew apart when comms were lost.

Great test though. The reentry in HD video was eye-watering.

[eharding]

CraigyMc said:

I suspect the ship blew apart when comms were lost.

Space X saying the TDRS and Starlink data terminated simultaneously, indicating something catastrophic. Splendid effort all round though.

[GTO-3R]

Astonishing footage. SpaceX do this so well.

[geeks]

Couple of screen grabs

[RacerMike]

eharding said:

CraigyMc said:

I suspect the ship blew apart when comms were lost.

Space X saying the TDRS and Starlink data terminated simultaneously, indicating something catastrophic. Splendid effort all round though.

Agreed. Every launch they seem to get through the problems they had in the last one, so I'm sure they'll learn a huge amount from this. Looked to me like 1st stage successfully conducted it's boost back burn this time, and was on target....it just didn't manage to relight for splash down. Equally the 2nd stage managed to control itself during re-entry...and the footage. Wow.

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1768279990368612354?s=...

[RacerMike]

geeks said:

Couple of screen grabs

Genuinely looks like atmospheric entry scenes from Interstellar!

[RustyMX5]

OK. So next week for test 4?

[KTF]

RacerMike said:

Genuinely looks like atmospheric entry scenes from Interstellar!

The screws around the windows look like they could do with a bit of rework

[G111MDS]

That was incredible to watch.

[Caruso]

Impressive progress, though it would have been even more impressive to see the superheavy booster impacting the ocean at 1000+ km/h!

Edited by Caruso on Thursday 14th March 17:20

[MiniMan64]

So what’s the fourth iteration going to be?

Get it up there and then stick the landing on both coming back down?